The ‘R’ Word: Really, Really Overused

Paul Scheer, left, and Mark Duplass in a scene from the FX comedy "The League."Credit
Patrick McElhenney/FX

Civilization crumbles a little bit almost every time I turn on the television, and a single word-and-punctuation-mark combination is inflicting the damage.

You’ve heard it too, no doubt, and if you’re a person who values grace and urbanity and eating with utensils rather than burying your face in the plate, you’ve winced whenever some TV character has spewed it. It’s the snarky “Really?,” and it’s undoing 2,000 years’ worth of human progress.

I’m not talking about “Really?” as a request for more information or an expression of surprise. I’m referring to the more recent, faddish use of it: delivered with a high-pitched sneer to indicate a contempt so complete that it requires no clarification.

Say a co-worker shows up for a pivotal meeting wearing a plaid blouse and a polka-dot skirt. In the old days you might have said: “Well, that is certainly an interesting fashion choice. Myself, I prefer something more subdued when sitting down with a client.” Now, though, if you’ve succumbed to the loathsome trend, you will simply aim as withering a look as you can at your colleague, say “Really?” and walk away.

This irksome use has been turning up on television with a frequency that suggests that a scriptwriters’ union has trademarked it and is receiving royalties, even though its moment passed several years ago. We know that “Really?” has jumped the shark because America’s leading satire factories have been disrespecting it for years. “Saturday Night Live” had the “Really!?! With Seth and Amy” skits, in which Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler beat the word to death as a means of mocking celebrity blunders and such. On “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” John Oliver, especially, has pioneered the extremely difficult Reverse “Really?,” in which he belittles a sane and reasoned stance taken by Mr. Stewart with a “Really?” when Mr. Oliver’s own view is the ludicrous one.

And yet the scriptwriters keep trotting out the word as if it were something fresh and original. When a character does something stupid or says something inappropriate or expresses an opinion another character dislikes, a “Really?” can’t be far behind.

Guys use it when shooting the breeze. Pete, for instance, tossed a “Really?” at the boorish Andre in an episode of the FX comedy “The League” last October after Andre delivered a critique of a woman by speculating that she had a retrograde uterus.

But guys probably can’t be held to a high standard of discourse. More alarming is that “Really?” has crept into our finest medical establishments. When a monkey rode a motorized toy ambulance through a veterinary hospital in the pilot of NBC’s “Animal Practice,” Dorothy, the hospital’s new owner, looked on aghast and then said the vile word to the doctor who was presiding over the chaos.

Big business, too, has been infested. The pilot of Showtime’s “House of Lies” last winter wasn’t four minutes old when Don Cheadle’s character, a high-priced consultant, spat a “Really?” at his father after Dad had criticized his child-rearing skills.

The military too. Last week’s premiere of ABC’s “Last Resort” had barely begun before a high-ranking officer threw a “Really?” at two subordinates who were goofing around. No wonder the whole submarine is now in the middle of a nuclear crisis.

And, yes, the plague has reached the highest levels of government. In the season finale of the HBO comedy “Veep” in June, what did Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Selina, the vice president of the United States, say to a staff member who had prematurely sent out a news release about his own promotion? “Really?” John C. Calhoun and who knows how many other oratorically inclined former vice presidents turned over in their graves.

People repeat what they hear on TV, and so “Really?” keeps spreading in everyday life. And since everyday life is now patterned after the fake everyday life of reality TV, a vicious cycle has asserted itself. Just a few weeks ago the coach on “Cheer,” a new CMT reality series about a teenage cheerleading squad, fired not one, not two, but three “Reallys?” at the girls after a botched move in practice. Scripted TV influences reality TV influences real life; repeat endlessly.

I could successfully argue that the “Really?” epidemic on scripted shows is lazy writing; why do the hard work of spinning meaningful dialogue when you can grab a cheap laugh with a single word? But I’m more concerned about the role these TV “Reallys?” are playing in the continuing collapse of society.

Photo

From left in foreground, Anna Chlumsky, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale in the show "Veep," on HBO.Credit
Bill Gray/HBO

“Really?” was once an expression of wonderment that also acknowledged a gap in the user’s knowledge. Back when Einstein first announced that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, the “Reallys?” that resulted were saying: “I am astounded by your discovery, so much so that I can scarcely wrap my head around it. You, sir, are a genius.”

Were Einstein to make the same announcement in today’s science-denying age, there would also be a chorus of “Reallys?,” but they’d be saying: “Can you believe this guy? He and those global-warming freaks ought to get a room. And a haircut.”

The word also spent time as an interjection, an expression of dismay. “Really!,” a stuffy aristocrat might have said when she saw young people jitterbugging. I’m no etymologist; I don’t know when that exclamation point became a question mark and was wrapped in sarcasm. But “Really?” wasn’t the first to undergo the transformation from innocuous to malicious. “Excuse me” the apology became “Excuse me?” the accusation, used in roughly the same way as the scornful “Really?” (I heard it employed just that way the other day on the Disney teenage series “Jessie,” a dismaying example for our young people.)

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“Seriously?” and “Honestly?,” the requests for clarity of intent, became “Seriously?” and “Honestly,” the abrupt dismissals. The script-writing fad before “Really?” was the once-benign inquiry “How’s that working out for you?,” but even the most lackadaisical writers had to abandon it after Sarah Palin proved what a cliché it had become by using it.

This linguistic co-opting cannot go on. For one thing, having words with more than one meaning is dangerous — who among us hasn’t been slugged after offering a pre-“Jessie” “excuse me” that was interpreted as an age-of-sarcasm “excuse me”? For another thing, there are only so many words in the language. Soon the only emotion we’ll have words to express is disdain.

The derisive “Really?” is a cop-out word, for television characters and real people. It relieves the user of having to clarify his own position or approach new ideas with genuine curiosity. Perhaps having monkeys wander unrestrained through medical facilities has an undiscovered curative effect, but we’ll never know.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the rebuttal phase of one of this fall’s presidential debates consists entirely of one man looking at the other and saying, “Really?”George Carlin once had a list of seven words you couldn’t say on TV. Time for an update.

A version of this article appears in print on October 2, 2012, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The ‘R’ Word: Really, Really Overused. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe